Over the past decade, we’ve seen dozens of Apple products released, and hundreds of VR headsets hit the market. Apple’s newest piece of tech is a bold attempt at synthesizing both of these ideas into one. The Vision Pro is a virtual/augmented reality headset that is marketed as a product for everyday use. Working, watching movies and TV, cooking, walking the streets, playing with kids—even the most menial tasks can be done wearing the headset.
Before its release, Apple announced they would be hosting free guided demonstrations of the Vision Pro in stores. These thirty-minute demos allow guests to experience the Vision Pro hands on, and become equated with the operating system and user interface. Last month, I visited the Apple Store in Deer Park to try it out.
Upon my arrival, I was told it would take around ten minutes for the staff to prepare my headset for the demo.
When my headset was ready, my guide, Danny, brought me through the basics of its exterior features. The Vision Pro has a sleek aluminum outer design that mirrors the style of every other Apple product out there. Additionally, the headband is made from a flexible, knitted material as opposed to the rigid plastic that is seen on most other commercial headsets.
The Vision Pro runs fully off of an external battery pack, of which Danny was able to give me more insight into, “The battery pack itself lasts around two hours depending on what you’re doing, but it can be plugged into a wall charger so you can get full use of it” said Danny.
Unlike other headsets like the Meta Quest 2, The Vision Pro is not functional without being connected to a power source.
Putting the headset on, everything around you is immediately visible. You aren’t looking directly through the headset per se, but at cameras that are recording your surroundings from the outside. This creates a strange, faded look to everything around you that can only be described as video-game like.
The guided demonstration took me through many different apps and programs, but easily the most incredible part was an 180 degree movie created by Apple specifically for the demo. I’ve tried many VR headsets, but I can confidently say this has the most incredible visuals of any headset on the market. The Vision Pro boasts a 23 million pixel display across both displays, and it really shows in this two minute short film that takes you through mountains, savannahs, and even on a tightrope in between two cliff faces.
One of the most unique aspects of the Vision Pro is that there are no controllers. Users control the displays within the headset through hand tracking—they are able to pinch and pull in the air with their hands in order to manipulate the virtual windows, just as you would on an iPhone display. In my experience, learning the controls was very easy and intuitive.
Possibly the biggest caveat though, is the price. The standard Vision Pro comes in at $3500, a price that is far too much for any highschooler working a minimum-wage job. Hopefully we will see the price come down in future iterations, but for now the price is just too unrealistic for a product so new.
For all my criticisms, it’s important to remember that this product is the first of its kind. The Vision Pro is a completely new technology, so it’s expected to come with growing pains in its future iterations. Overall, its current use as an everyday product is not as effective as is advertised by Apple. The controls can be clunky and unresponsive at times, the display doesn’t exactly emulate real-life, and the lack of the ability to interact with others while inside VR just isn’t conducive to a productive working environment.
However, where the Vision Pro really shines through is in its potential. At its current state, many see the device as gimmicky and not useful. But if the technology we see in the 1.5 pound Vision Pro can be condensed into something smaller such as a pair of glasses, it’s easy to say that the biggest tech product since the iPhone is on the horizon.
